Coeur (Band Interview)

We’ve talked about Coeur before: The Panama City based band that serves up genre bending metal music. (Since that piece they have added a fourth member to the mix.)

We’ve been privy to something uniquely special with this band. Nearly all bands aim to grow and evolve, but it is more pronounced with Coeur because in the scope of nearly three years we have watched them go from kids to young adults with a strong sense of their personal musical identity.

Taking their name from a Baroness song, Dylan says, “When Ryan and I started the band, we needed a name and we both really liked Baroness, so… And then I found out it is french for heart. I like heart, but that has nothing to do with it.”

Coeur blazes their own music path, which means they don’t fit the mold of any of the metal genres or sub-genres. To attempt to describe them in such terms is an entirely futile effort.

As Nick puts it, “We all have different influences; Corey is really into groove and doom and stoner and stuff. Dylan is into really crust and hardcore. I’m into melodic, ambient, post-rock. And Ryan is into whatever sounds good for drums. We kind of bring it all together and mesh it into different songs. You can kind of tell which song is written by Dylan or I, by the way it is structured and the way it is composed.”

Although Nick is deemed the primary songwriter, it is a collaborative effort. “It is a lot of trial and error to find what works best,” explains Corey. “And if it doesn’t work we will either completely modify it, or change it, or play it backwards…”

“Or in Spanish or Norwegian,” jokes Dylan.

“We have never trashed a song,” says Nick. “We will come back to it, or rip the riffs out and add them in a different song. The longest song we just wrote, ‘Rain,’ was a composition of many riffs that I’ve been making up over the last few months or so. I just compiled them all together into a 13 minute long epic and I think it turned out really well.”

Don’t expect Coeur’s lyrics to tread into metal cliche’s. “We will write some songs about social differences or things we look around and see,” explain Nick. “Our latest songs are about people we’ve grown to love or really depressing moments. All our songs are really personal. It is almost like when you listen to our songs you are reading a short sad story. Like ‘Rain,’ I’ve already shown some people it and they get really depressed or cried. When you can make someone feel an emotion with your art; that is the main goal.”

As for the future of Coeur? “More recordings and more shows,” answers Dylan. “We are going to record another EP soon with the new songs. We have a new equipment. We just want to play more shows and record more songs.”